Simultaneous use of welfare benefits

This report provides an overview of the scope of simultaneous use of 8 different welfare benefits; social assistance, work assessment allowance, qualification benefit, introduction benefit, disability benefit, unemployment benefit, transitional benefit and supplementary benefit in the period 2011-2015. Simultaneous use is defined as the simultaneous receipt of two different welfare benefits at the same time.

We find that most persons in receipt of one of the selected welfare benefits in the period 2011-2015 only receive one benefit. Nevertheless, approximately 10 per cent are simultaneous recipients. On average, this represents 75 000 persons, 156 000 recipients of welfare benefits and 80 000 recipients with simultaneous use each year in the period.

The report shows that 12 different combinations of the selected welfare benefits are common. We find simultaneous use of social assistance and all the other selected welfare benefits. Transitional benefit and graded disability benefit are combined with both the work assessment allowance and unemployment benefit. In addition, we find simultaneous use of transitional benefit and introduction benefit. Part of the simultaneous use is registered as such because recipients have had a transition from one benefit to another. Approximately 21 per cent of the recipients with simultaneous use of the 12 different combinations in 2015 can be defined as transitioning from one welfare benefit to another.

This report also discusses different measures of simultaneous use. We primarily consider the number of recipients with simultaneous use as a share of the welfare benefit recipients. The report shows that the share of recipients with simultaneous use varies among the recipients of the different welfare benefits. Among recipients of qualification benefit, nearly half are simultaneous recipients of social assistance, while among the recipients of graded disability benefit only one per cent combines this with unemployment benefit.

The report also shows that the share of simultaneous use varies among recipients with different demographic characteristics. Among the recipients of most of the selected welfare benefits, we find for example that the share of simultaneous use of social assistance is higher among men than women. The share of simultaneous use of social assistance decreases with age, and recipients with a low education level have a higher share of simultaneous use of social assistance than recipients with a higher education level. Furthermore, we see that the share of simultaneous use of social assistance is higher among single persons than those who live with their partner, and among recipients with a background from Asia, Africa etc. than the general population.

Recipients with simultaneous use are often registered as recipients of both welfare benefits in the statistics. Unless we show that the person can be a recipient of several benefits, this will not give a representative picture. In order to give an accurate impression, recipients with simultaneous use of welfare benefits must be highlighted.